


discovery

by ignitesthestars



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Holding Hands, Honesty, Slow Romance, mid s7, they're old it's taking a while ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 03:04:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15810015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignitesthestars/pseuds/ignitesthestars
Summary: “So,” Kolivan says, when he’s well enough to be saying more than the absolute necessary. “Keith.”A complicated weight of years sits uncomfortably between Krolia’s position at the shuttle controls and Kolivan’s next to her. In a way they’re almost caught up to each other, her two years in the quantum abyss against the three she’d been absent from the universe as he knew it.On the more practical side of things, he’s had at least three years to wonder just how far she’d strayed from her mission on Earth.





	discovery

“So,” Kolivan says, when he’s well enough to be saying more than the absolute necessary. “Keith.”

A complicated weight of years sits uncomfortably between Krolia’s position at the shuttle controls and Kolivan’s next to her. In a way they’re almost caught up to each other, her two years in the quantum abyss against the three she’d been absent from the universe as he knew it.

On the more practical side of things, he’s had at least three years to wonder just how far she’d strayed from her mission on Earth. That, and to resent her absence at all. Kolivan has never been one to hold a grudge - far too emotional - but those years cradle a lot of dead Blades in them. Krolia doesn’t know if she could have prevented any of them, but she does know that she wasn’t here to find out.

“Keith,” is all she says at first, confirming the obvious. “Did you know when you sent him to me?”

“The pieces were not difficult to put together. Your blade awoke in his hand. That would have been enough to make me suspect, but your sojourn on Earth matched his approximate age. After seeing him in action, I had little reason to doubt.”

Krolia cuts her gaze sideways, away from the endless stars. She thinks she hallucinates something like a smile creasing the pained corners of Kolivan’s mouth as he reads the question in her movement.

“He moves like you.”

“He moves sensibly according to his build. I wasn’t there to influence that.”

“He has your same sentimentality.”

If Krolia were twenty years younger, she might have blushed. Now, though, she just rolls her eyes. “Most people just say thank you when someone saves their life, Kolivan.”

“If that is what I were referring to, you may have a point.”

If there’s one thing that being a Blade has taught her, it’s that guilt is a wasted emotion. It slows you down, and does nothing to salve the wounds your decisions have inflicted on another person.

And yet. Krolia isn’t a drone. After all these years, she never did find the emotional off switch, and for all his preaching, she doesn’t think Kolivan did either.

“I was tired, and I was in love,” she tells the stars. There’s a dull ache in her chest, thinking back on her old lover, buried for so long now. Worse, to know that her son was left alone. “I don’t expect you to understand, or to forgive. I have lied to you all these years, and if the price of that lie is to lose your trust, I accept that.”

Silence, except for the sound of their stolen shuttle working to keep them alive in the infinite vacuum of space. Truthfully, she expects it to draw out for the rest of their trip, with perhaps a brief clarification from Kolivan on where he and his trust have landed. Neither of them are big talkers, and both of them know there’s more at stake than their personal relationship here.

“Your son,” Kolivan says eventually, and something in Krolia’s chest lurches to hear it, “is one of our bestwarriors. I would have said in spite of his tendency towards emotion, and I suspect you would say because of it. That difference, I think, is the heart of why the Blades of Marmora have endured these long years.”

“Kolivan--”

“We have always worked best as a team, Krolia.” He closes his eyes, a brief concession to the exhaustion she knows is dragging at his body, sapping his energy. He’s stable, certainly, but not well. “It is good to have you back. It has always been good to have you back.”

There’s a forgiveness in those words that she hadn’t sought out, had never expected to hear or deserve. It washes over her, soothing and cool, and Kolivan is right about her relationship with her own feelings. She never would have admitted to needing it, but in having it she finds only relief.

She breathes out softly. “It’s good to be back.”

Silence descends upon them again, softer this time. A familiar comfort, disturbed by a singular niggling thought that she can’t quite let go.

“Why send him? If you knew what he was to me, if you were so concerned about the effect emotions have on either of us?”

Kolivan huffs. The sound is so unusual, it takes Krolia a second to place it as a laugh, like a man who has been getting away with something long after he expected to be caught.

“The mission is always paramount. You and Keith both knew that, and were both skilled enough to see it through even if things went sideways.”

That’s not an answer. That’s a calculated risk - one that paid off, but Kolivan has been her companion for decades now. She may have kept her son a secret from him, but he had to know where her loyalties would come down if push came to shove. He was not a man prone to optimism.

So she looks at him, directly this time. A wry smile tugs at his mouth, there and gone again. He does not look away.

“I knew that the two of you would get each other out.”

Such a simple statement. Such utter faith in so few words, and hidden underneath all of them, perhaps a glimpse of something Krolia has never really allowed herself to consider. 

The universe is on fire. They have an order to rebuild, and Krolia has a son to get back to. She can see the flicker of a light at the end of the tunnel, the vague shape of what a life not spent fighting and killing and spying might look like, and after last time maybe that should terrify her. Maybe she’s crazy, to want to try and risk failing so awfully once again.

Krolia smiles, a predator’s grin that has a peculiar effect on the colour of Kolivan’s cheeks. Without saying anything, she simply takes one hand off the flight controls, reaching out to thread her fingers through his.

He hesitates. That doesn’t bother her, knowing in their own language what she’s asking, and what he must consider if he’s ready to give.

And then his hold tightens on hers. They fly onwards to start over again, together.


End file.
